A mixed blessing beats a curse

Dignitaries cut the ribbon on San Joaquin County's fourth prison facility on Tuesday, a rare occasion to hit the applause sign and hurl a rotten tomato.

Michael Fitzgerald

Dignitaries cut the ribbon on San Joaquin County's fourth prison facility on Tuesday, a rare occasion to hit the applause sign and hurl a rotten tomato.

State prison officials dedicated the $839 million California Health Care Facility. The immense, 54-building medical complex is designed to care for 1,722 inmate-patients.

It is a medical hospital and a psych ward. With a third component, an annex with more psych beds, yet to come.

The prison hospital joins two old Youth Authority prisons located on the same site east of Stockton and a prison outside Tracy to bring San Joaquin's total of prison facilities to four.

That ties San Joaquin with Kern County for prison capital of California (though population in the two Youth Authority prisons is way down and shrinking).

So, for all its upside, even conceding a certain logic to building here (they own land here) the facility smacks of old-fashioned class and regional discrimination by the state.

The five counties that produce the most inmates are all in Southern California. The counties with the most prisons are in the San Joaquin Valley.

But we won't go on about that. The state may be in the throes of changing to a more collaborative system while seeking to reduce its population.

Collaboration wasn't the case in 2009, though. The state swaggered in here and informed local officials they were going to build two new prison facilities (also a "re-entry facility." That went away).

They ordered Stockton to extend sewer and water lines to the facilities at the city's cost, shifting millions in their operational costs onto the backs of Stockton taxpayers.

And if negotiations over these and other glaringly unjust impacts came to nothing, too bad, state lawyers said.

"We said, 'What happens if you can't work this out in a timely fashion?" recalled attorney Steve Herum. "They said, 'We're going to do this anyway with nothing (in it for you).' Then they said, 'If you sue us, we won't do anything. We won't talk to anybody that sues us.'"

Fortunately, Douglass Wilhoit and the rest of local chamber board hired Herum at their own expense to file a suit challenging the state's woefully inadequate Environmental Impact Report.

The city of Stockton and the county of San Joaquin joined the suit.

Evidently, the state came to realize their hubristic EIR could not withstand challenge. Loss would mean delays costing millions and trouble with the feds.

State officials became reasonable. It's funny how that works.

What's funnier is that, by all accounts, the state really did transform from bully into partner.

"In their defense, they executed the agreement in a superlative fashion, and went far beyond what was required, in every respect," Herum attested.

One example: Local hire provisions reached in the settlement applied only to the first two construction phases. But when the third phase rolled around, the state recommended that the big contractor follow the same policy. And it did.

Of about 2,000 workers on the site in June, about 1,000 hailed from San Joaquin County. And 550 from Stockton. That's treating a community right.

The state also paid to expand San Joaquin Delta College's psych tech program. It paid Stockton Unified to open a Health Careers Academy. Both promise lasting benefits.

"Hopefully, this will provide us with an opportunity to retain more of our educated youth in our community, which we need to do," said Janice Miller, a manager in Stockton's Economic Development Department.

The state financed a secure ward at the county hospital for acutely sick inmates. That boosts hospital revenue. The state also threw money at roads and other things.

It's not a perfect deal. Way higher salaries at the facilities may drain medical professionals out of local health care centers. It may drain guards out of the jail. Gangsta families of inmates may move here to be near dear old dad.

But a mixed blessing beats a curse.

The future of prisons in San Joaquin is hard to predict. A pessimist would worry should Youth Authority prisons empty out, the state may one day eye those buildings for adult prisons. Possibly a maximum security prison.

But by all accounts, the top prison officials stopped being dictatorial and figured out an agreeable way to work with the city.

"The city of Stockton and all our partners showed the state and CDCR the right way to treat a community," Wilhoit said. "We taught them a lesson."

Added Herum, "We certainly have precedent to demonstrate to the state that this community is not a pushover."